On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 13:07 +0000, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
I'm sure others have alot of nice ideas on how to change the syntax to be more consistent and/or easier to parse, which of course brings us to the next problem:
- We can't (easily) change it
It sucks but we really can't, in would instantly render gigabytes of current wikitext incompatable with the parser, there are basically two solutions to this problem: continue supporting two syntaxes for some time which puts a big limit on what kind of changes can be made or automatically convert them with some kind of bot bot.
I don't realy see that as a big problem at all. If we change the syntax, yes, we'll have to lock the databases, making everything read-only while an update process goes through all those gigabytes. But we really can do that overnight, only inconveniencing users a little.
A slightly bigger problem is bots that expect the old syntax. We'll have to give plenty of warning and make sure they're turned off or updated prior to the switch.